Rotten Apple

Apple's entire claim to fame is simplicity. Apple's hardware—be it Macs, iPads, or iPhones—is impeccably designed, paired with software that's just as tailored and thoughtful. Unnecessary complications are ruthlessly eliminated; everything just works. Even we at Windows-focused PCWorld have to acknowledge that.

Bendgate

The 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus supersized the iPhone formula but simultaneously—magically, even—slimmed down to thinner widths than the barely-there iPhone 5s. But as it turns out, a big slab of ultra-thin aluminum has some downsides, too. Namely, the brand-new phones have been warping from the stress of simply being carried around in people's pockets.

iOS 8gate

The company managed to quell Bendgate in mere hours… by releasing a borked iOS 8.0.1 update that disabled the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus's TouchID sensor and prevented phones from connecting to cellular networks.

Apple yanked the update, but not before a small legion of early adopters had downloaded it. Adding insult to digital injury, rolling back the update via iCloud backups dumps you back on iOS 7. The only way to return to vanilla iOS 8 for now is by connecting to iTunes on your computer.

Apple is Shellshocked

The final blow is no fault of Apple's, but it's still gotta hurt. Late Wednesday, security researchers announced "Shellshock," a critical flaw in the Bash shell command line tool found in many Unix systems, including OS X Mavericks. Shellshock has the potential to be bigger than the devastating "Heartbleed" bug found in OpenSSL earlier this year.

The bug has been confirmed to work in OS X Mavericks (update: though Apple says it isn't vulnerable by default). This StackExchange thread explains how to test whether your Mac is in danger, and it also offers a highly technical way to plug the hole. Apple's sure to officially patch it sooner rather than later. PCWorld's Bash bug report has all the details.

Will it all blow over in time? Sure. Does Apple still make exquisite products? Yep. But this brief interlude proving that the men and women behind the trademark Apple magic are indeed only human, and possible of making very human mistakes--well, it can't be over soon enough.